The Strange, Strange Power of A Three-Day Fast


When Fast Sunday is approaching, I often find myself watching sleight of hand videos on Youtube. It hasn’t happened yet, but one day soon I hope to be able to secretly swipe enough sacrament to reassemble an entire piece of bread. Unfortunately my hands are not nimble, and I usually end up just doing a whole bunch of finger snaps while the tray speeds by. 

Seriously though, some time ago I read an account about fasting. It was an old pioneer account referencing something Joseph Smith said about the surprising power of a three day fast. After that I saw three day fasts referenced in other old Church stories. It took several references before I realized this could be a list worth compiling.

These are the accounts I could re-find as I went back looking for them. There weren’t a ton more, but if you know of some I’d love to see them!

I’ll start with my favorite. It makes me think I’ll keep this whole 3 day fast thing in my back pocket for when things hit the fan. It’s from an early convert named…


Joseph Lee Robinson

“And it came to pass the Lord gave unto us a daughter, a beautiful Intelligent child. She was born June 12, 1845 almost one year after the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Patriarch. We rejoiced greatly and thanked God for in the gift of our dear little daughter. We named her Mary Elizabeth a heavenly treasure. But the destroyer seemed bent on the destruction of this child also. For some cause or reason we do not know, she became afflicted. She had fits and it seemed we could not stop them. We prayed for her. We administered oil and the laying on of hands and called in the elders. We doctored her but to no purpose only she would seem to get a little better. We took her to the patriarch, Uncle John Smith, he blessed her and after he administered to her he looked at her and said, There is a very intelligent spirit in that tabernacle and if you save her on the earth you have to exercise a large amount of faith for the destroyer seeks to destroy such that they should not remain on the earth…

“Those stubborn fits would not stop. We had heard the prophet Joseph say inasmuch as any member of a family was sick, if the heads of the family would fast three days they should get better. We knowing him to be a true prophet of God therefore we believed what he said. My wife proposed a fast, I replied if you think that you can stand it nursing a child I certainly will try it. She said that she would do anything she could to save that child. So we set about it with a will.

“We ate our dinners today as usual but when night came we ate no supper and morning came we ate no breakfast. She did her housework and I went to our wagon shop and worked all day as usual and this was the winter before our exit from Nauvoo to the Rocky Mountains. Our ward was organized into a company to build wagons and to make preparations to leave that place in the spring so that I was obliged to work whether sick or well, whether eating or fasting although at this time I was severely afflicted with rheumatism in my back and hip and had taken cold through taking off some flannel underclothes and sudden change of weather. With all this we had also to fast and pray for this we had decided. The first day was the hardest day for me. The second day came and no eating but plenty of work and I did not suffer as much that day. On the third day I came to work as usual. I proposed to my wife that she was nursing a child so that she must have a little crust and some food occasionally. But neither of us ate a mouthful at any time or anything whatsoever… we ate no dinner until suppertime came and we feel satisfied that our three day fast was complete. We ate our supper and as yet there had been no change with the fits and the child or with my lameness. We retired to our beds to rest after saying our prayers as usual, but as the Lord liveth, these fits upon our dear child stopped and she had no more while we lived in Nauvoo and my lameness went entirely away this night. We testified that we received and acknowledge this signal favor and the great blessing from the hand of God our Heavenly Father. We are led to believe that if the Latter-day Saints would more thoroughly repent of their sins and clean themselves up, fast and pray more and use the doctors less, we would be a great people and there would be a great many more cases of healing than there are.” (https://archive.org/stream/JlrBasicJournal/jlr_basic_journal_djvu.txt) (P. 58)

Now to draw your attention to a few things. First – I feel like this long of a fast requires water. Robinson was hard at work making wagons. Hammering, nailing, lifting & cutting. I think it is unlikely he did this dehydrated for 3 days. If you make a go of this – keep in mind the human body can only go a week or so without water. After that – the fast becomes a lot longer.

Below is a reference, to be transparent, to a three Nephite visitation. Not just any 3 Nephite visitation – the best one ever! It did, however, first appear in a Church publication. This makes me entirely comfortable in putting it on the list:


Robert Edge
“ln the early part of July, Mr. Edge kindly informed his followers that he would soon depart on his Father's business. Before leaving, however, he desired all those whom he had blessed to go with him through a fast of three days. In calling his brethren and sisters together he told them the fast he desired them to pass through was similar to that observed in ancient days by the Apostle Paul.
“He gave as his reasons for this task the cleansing and purifying of the system, the preparatory step to a greater labor, to test their worthiness to enter God's kingdom; and lastly, if they would honestly and faithfully go through this fast, it would enable them to taste of that spirit that would hereafter, through obedience, bring them forth in the first resurrection.

“As the greater part of his followers lived on the banks of Beech River, near the mouth of Haley's Creek, this place was selected for the purpose of fasting. These three days were spent in singing, and praying, and rejoicing in the Lord. Once a day they were allowed to bathe in the waters of Beech River.

“Some were only able to fight the pangs of hunger one day, while others held out until the evening of the second day; but only twenty­one, out of the sixty­odd who began the fast, were able to say on the evening of the third day, "I have truthfully kept the fast…."

“…In those who had followed him through these ordeals, Mr. Edge seemed to have implicit confidence. Hence, he began teaching the more advanced principles of eternal life, such as building places of worship, erecting temples to the Most High, and to prepare for the grand millennium day of rest, when Christ will reign a thousand years on earth. In this connection he told his followers that this continent, the land of the free, the home of the brave and the asylum of the oppressed, is the place designated by Him who reigns on high for the building of that beautiful city, the New Jerusalem; aye, and more: that the day would come when these United States would be dotted with temples, one of which would be built in Henderson County, Tennessee.

“Soon after their fast he called them together and pronounced upon each couple a ceremony of marriage, and gave them to understand that if another opportunity was not afforded them, this would hold throughout time and all eternity. He also gave them some tokens that they might know when they entered a temple controlled by servants of God.” (https://books.google.com/books?id=aAzZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA472&lpg=PA472&dq=%22robert+edge.+the+mysterious+preacher%22&source=bl&ots=UnuFHR70cE&sig=sCK6NE0KQe_aqybkSA-q7cSTWnY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisgu3LkpPaAhVX3GMKHcg3BnwQ6AEIOTAE#v=onepage&q=%22fast%20of%20three%20days%22&f=false)

Edge gave a pretty heavy promise too: “…if they would honestly and faithfully go through this (3 day) fast, it would enable them to taste of that spirit that would hereafter, through obedience, bring them forth in the first resurrection…”

That last bit about the tokens is interesting too. It reminds me of Acts 1:3's 'Tekmerion'. (More on that here!)

Now on to Wilford Woodruff. This is from a time when he was clearly spiritually inclined and vested in the gospel. But it’s still his early days. He sets out for a three day fast but gets his results sooner than that. Still though – why did he and his friends decide on three days?

Wilford Woodruff
“… I then repaired into the lower Court of the Lords house in company with Elders Joseph B. Nobles & G.  W.  Meeks to spend the night (after being anointed) in prayer & fasting before God.  The veils being closed we entered the elder’s pulpit & there upon our knees we pled with God & we covenanted with each other in the holy stand that we would not give sleep to our eyes neither take food until we received a blessing from God by the outpourings of his spirit upon us if it was until the end of three days.  And according to our Covenant we commenced praying & a part of the night we had a severe trial of our faith by great temptation from Satan but before day we gained a good degree of victory over the Devil & the Lord poured out his spirit upon us & we felt it good to be in the house of God while nature was hushed in silenced by the sable shades of night.  After spending the night in prayer we returned to our homes in the morning intending to spend the day in prayer & fasting for still greater blessings...

“April 5th.  I spent a part of the day in attending the high council the remainder in writing, prayer, & fasting.  I again repaired to the upper lower part of the house of the Lord at 5 o’clock PM. with the quorum of the Seventies for a solemn assembly anointing &c.  Three out of the seven presidents were present & anointed twelve.  The spirit of God sat upon us & we were satisfied with our blessing.  Consequently I returned home with those brethren with whom I had covenanted for a blessing & took some food & retired to rest being 24 hours since we had taken food or sleep.  There was much of the Spirit of Prophesy & revelation poured upon the heads of the anointed in the different quorums.” (https://bcgmaxwell.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/wilford-woodruff-kirtland-diary/)

When Woodruff says “The spirit of God sat upon us” and “much of the Spirit of Prophesy & revelation poured upon the heads.” Does that sound like Edge’s promise “to taste of that spirit that would hereafter, through obedience, bring them forth in the first resurrection…””?
Loosely, at least.
All this kind of sounds like a key we have to be able to unlock heaven itself. It would take a lot of faith to fast 3 days. You’d have to really believe in your cause and in your results.
It’s kind of refreshing that this kind of spiritual muscle is out there.
Pass the pringles.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts!

7 Super Great Legends of 3 Nephite Visits (One’s a First Hand Video!)

Image
I am going to make a bold statement. Ahem. Everyone has a 3 Nephite story. I’m going to take back that statement and replace it with this one – a whole bunch of multi-generation LDS families have a 3 Nephite story hanging from one of the branches in the family tree. My grandmother had a story. She thought one mysteriously stepped in to help when her husband was out of town and she was perusing orphanages with open enrollment for her six kids. All the orphanages were full, FYI. At least that’s what they claimed after the third day of the trial run. Really though, there are loads of 3 Nephite stories. Loads of them!  Just like seer stone stories , angel visitation stories or LDS raising the dead stories – there are 3 Nephite stories a-plenty! Below find just a few. For a ton of them you should check here . This list is comprised of pretty old stories – they happened a long time ago. The last one on the list is a first hand accou...
Read more

Have The LDS Prophets Seen Jesus Christ? (12 Yes!)(2 No!)(3 Quite Possibly!)

Image
The absolute #1 question in the Church, according to polls I may or may not have actually conducted, is “Why do the 16 year old priests have to squish the bread so hard when they’re ripping up the sacrament?” It gives the whole thing a very distracting, mashed and rubber-like consistency. If I may, I’d like to suggest a solution. Give everyone in the congregation their own entire slice of bread. Two if it’s thin sliced and a fast Sunday. We would take it right out of the bag ourselves, of course. The only possible squishing then would be in the shopping cart under a bag of apples. Such damage would taste a lot less teenage-fingery. I feel like I could cope with that better. A close second most-asked question, of course, pertains to tithing discounts. I have it on good authority that we all get one of those on our baptism anniversary. (I don’t have that on any authority.) The third-most asked question, according to several internets, is do the modern prophets actually s...
Read more

Accidental Reinforcement of Christ's BOM Visit to the Americas (This is Big!)

Image
I’ve been on a kick lately. A blog-relevant kick. I’ve been looking into legends of Christ visitations outside of the holy land. Last week I posted 3 such legends – each specifically mentioning Christ by name. Then I started looking into legends of a bearded god appearing to people. There are loads of legends like that. I was just looking for a nice, even list of 10 to chain together. The tenth one struck so hard crocodiles might get PTSD triggered from the dinosaur extinction.     That tenth find, in my opinion, is more important than #s 1-9 combined. It is an Indian legend of Christ, specifically Christ, visiting their ancestors at the exact time the Book of Mormon says he did. A little background in case you don’t know - a visit from the resurrected Jesus Christ to Indian forefathers in America is, without a doubt, the crowning jewel of the Book of Mormon. It starts like this: 3 Nephi Chapter11: 1  And now it came to pass that there ...
Read more

3 Curious Legends Of Other Nations Visited By Christ

Image
OK these are pretty weird – and not doctrinal in the slightest. But they are interesting. They are interesting because of what Jesus said here – after his resurrection and just before his old-world ascension: John 10:16: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” The people in the Book of Mormon were those other sheep – Christ said so himself . And then he said he had yet other sheep to visit: 3 Nephi 16:1: “ And verily, verily, I say unto you that I have other sheep, which are not of this land, neither of the land of Jerusalem, neither in any parts of that land round about whither I have been to minister.” Of these other sheep we have no record. Yet. We certainly know they were visited, but do we know who they were? No way no how. But here are some interesting legends of Christ visitations. To be sure there are scores of accounts of...
Read more

11 Times People Glowed Like Jesus/Moses Outside of Scripture

Image
Occasionally throughout history – when the moment is spiritually profound enough, people have been recorded as emitting light through their own skin. “Glowing” is another way to describe it. For a baseline – here’s a smattering of scriptural references: Exodus 34: 29   ¶   And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the   two   tables   of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses   wist   not that the skin of his face   shone   while he talked with him. 30   And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. That’s Moses lighting up. It happened when he spoke to Jehovah. Jesus lit up too, ironically, when he spoke to an angelic-messenger Moses (and Elias): Matthew 17: 1   And after six days Jesus taketh   Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high ...
Read more

A Big Huge List of Tons of People Who Used Seer Stones

Image
Joseph Smith staring into the bottom of a hat to translate a book is a funny picture to some. Perhaps ‘to most’ would have been a better way to end that sentence. This was definitely left out of all my primary classes – but I learned about it in books readily available in the church-owned Deseret Book. It’s not really the secret angrier-corners of the internet would have you believe. Not only that – but Joseph Smith didn’t invent seer stones. He wasn’t the first one to throw a stone into a dark place to better see its stories. No, no – hippies love them too. Hippies and Joseph Smith. That’s the complete list of everyone who cares about seer stones. No more no less. Oh – except Io, the god of the Maoris. And boatloads of other Americans. And according to ancient Jewish lore, Adam, Abraham, Noah, Joseph of Egypt, etc… The list really goes on. It goes on long enough, in fact, that Joseph Smith goes from being a lonely stone-starer to one of alleged dozens. It’s actually a huge...
Read more

The Guy Who Watched A Girl Resurrect, A Guy Who Saw the SLC Temple in A Dream, A 3 Nephite-ish Visitor...etc...etc

Image
Oh boy I’ve got 7 good ones for you here. They are 7 stories that don’t have much in common except for their little-known status and their faith promoting possibilities. It also kind of shows that God will go after the one. But sometimes he will also go after the entire tribe:   1) A Dream Leads to the Conversion of the Shoshone Indians "Ten years after the Bear River Massacre of 1863, in which more than 300 Shoshone men, women, and children were killed by U.S. troops, a Shoshone elder had a dream. Chief Sagwitch, a survivor of the 1863 massacre, and other tribal elders felt the dream was inspired and was instructing the tribe to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After discussing the matter in great detail, the went looking for a Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) man whom they trusted, George Washington Hill, who lived in Ogden, Utah. "After obtaining permission from Church president Brigham Young, Hill travelled to the tribal land...
Read more

Some of Joseph Smith’s (Lesser Known) Big, Beautiful Bullseyes

Image
To make a list of Joseph Smith’s greatest prophetic hits isn’t hard. There are a lot of pretty commonly known ones like: ·       The eye popping alters of Nahom ·       The pleasing symmetry of Chiasmus ·       Startlingly accurate predictionsof the civil war ·       Indisputably undeniable proof of horsesin Nephite times Those things are all relatively well known in a lot of Latter-day Saint- circles. They’ve probably been listed on a lot of blogs. A list of Joseph Smith’s best hits isn’t as interesting if you already knew it’s contents. Joseph got loads of shocking things right. These things weren't readily available information in his place or time. These ones below aren’t too well known, by all I can tell. But each one lends incredible strength to Joseph Smith's prophetic claims. It a varied list. It's an unlikely list. It's a surprising list.  ...
Read more

Glowing Stones in the Book Of Mormon and Elsewhere (Lots of Elsewheres!)

Image
We've had stones on here before – seer stones. Everybody should have one. A billion people used them just like Joseph Smith and I have thoroughly chronicled every single one according to name, date, size and whether or not they taste at all salty. They do taste salty, FYI. All of them. Salty like the bottom corner of a bag of Rold Gold . I actually have no insight into the flavor of seer stones. I didn’t categorize anything either, just to clear things up. The previous stone-topic was about using the stones like a seer – gazing into them and seeing whatever you need to see OR want to see. You really should read that post.  It covers so much more. This post, though, is about stones as a source of light. It’s a super strange thing that only Mormons believe can exist - except not only Mormons believe it. There are loads of examples in Jewish Lore where mighty prophets use light-emitting stones to accomplish great works - I found a Chinese reference too. Most...
Read more

8 Different Miracle-Stuffed Temple Dedications

Image
Eight or nine months ago I was sitting in a fast & testimony meeting. An older woman was up there at the podium. She said something that surprised me. She said it almost as an after thought, and then moved on to the next sentence in less time than it takes an arthritic to pop a knuckle. What she said so matter-of-factly was that she’d seen angels at the Draper Temple Dedication. That’s a powerful comment. I looked around for reactions and although I saw eyes affixed - I heard no gasp. If ever there was a time to gasp that would have been it! The whole congregation took it in stride, though. That could be because angels play such a large part in our history. Joseph Smith used to accurately tell people exactly when they’d see an angel . The two testimonies closing out this piece included full blown angel sightings too. I actually know a handful of people that have angel stories. You probably do, too. Someone you know may share such a story if they think the...
Read more